The Delicate Weaving
by Paper Space
Summary: He was born during one of the hottest summers District One had seen in years. His mother, shallow and vain by all who knew her, cradled her newest trinket and declared they would stop and stare at her baby boy in the streets because he would be as spectacular as the sun. And then she gave him a name that even at a young age would be enough reinforce his worth; Marvel.
1. Foreward

"**I killed a boy whose name I don't even know. Somewhere his family is weeping for him. His friends call for my blood.**

**Maybe he had a girlfriend who really believed he would come back…"**

**- **_**The Hunger Games, page 243**_

* * *

_Foreward_

* * *

WHEN he died, a collective sigh fell across the streets rimmed with golden accents. It flowed from the windows of lavish homes across the square and from the crowded tenant buildings near the diamond factories on the outskirts of the district known for its luxury. Well that was it, wasn't it? No hand-outs for the rich this year, no days off for the working class.

If you would have asked the two women with matching silver tattoos engraved into their fair skin who usually sat outside for their lunch on the cobble stone roads of the inner-most part of the square; they would have hardly been able to contain their giggles as they told you that their male tribute this year was certainly handsome enough with his white teeth and strong bone structure, though they knew nothing of fighting. If you would have asked the middle aged man who almost always could have been found at the bar near the factories when he wasn't working, he would have told you as he dipped his pipe into a dish of morphling that you were a fool for not betting on the kid- no, _really,_ even though he usually had bad luck when it came to gambles he was putting a lot on this one.

But at the moment of his death, one of the woman with the silver tattoos had attended a party and was giggling at a joke told by a gentleman who was visiting from the Capitol, while the middle aged man sat before the dingy television screen at the bar, throwing his money on the ground as good friends jested at his luck.

No one who hailed from District One could have foreseen what the boy had done, the revolution his actions had sparked. They didn't know that he had started a fire when he killed the little girl. A fire that would change their ways of life; some for better, and some for worse.

They didn't know. They couldn't know. Not at the time, not then. No one thought that far ahead.

And as for the boy, well, he would go down in the history books as _dead_.

No one knew that was his worst fear. When the Girl from Twelve- whose name would not be forgotten for generations to come (the girl who began the fire, they would later say), dropped the nest of Tracker Jackers on the camp where he slept, District One had barely even paid attention to him; mostly because they were too busy watching their other contribution to the Games call out for help while her lovely skin bubbled from fatal stings. But even if they had, all they would have seen was him withering on the ground and crawling into a bush.

They wouldn't have understood that he covered his face to keep the roots of the trees from crawling into his eyes and nostrils because they were trying to keep him in that arena forever. They wouldn't have understood that he cringed because he realized that he had no purpose, when he died the world would keep turning and he would be left with nothing at all. Just blackness.

He realized a little too late in life that death was his worst fear. And at just seventeen years old he died.

If you were to say this to the woman with the silver tattoos, perhaps tap on her shoulder as she talked to the Capitol man she fancied, she would have sighed "How poetic, what a tragedy!" But if you traveled far across the country to tell this to a girl with a single coin stuffed in her shoe and beads of sweat across her dark forehead, she would have told you with narrow eyes, "He deserved it."

In the grand scheme, the boy ended up being nothing more than his actions. And with time, the nation would even forget that.

But that is in the grand scheme. As individuals, the grand scheme isn't what always matters because there are a million smaller stories to create it. And perhaps this is something the boy never knew, or never took the time to think about. But it is true.

If you were to walk past the cobble stone streets gilded with gold and lined with sprawling estates; if you were to walk past the empty market place; if you were to follow the roads until grass spilled forth from the cracks in the stones; you would have come to a chain fence topped with barbed wire. On the day the boy died, if you were to go to that spot, you would have found a girl who held her face in her hands and whose frail shoulders racked from the pain as tears made permanent scars in the places they trailed down her cheeks. Because the boy who would now only be known as dead had worked his way into her very being until he had become a part in every fiber of her life.

When Katniss Everdeen shot her arrow through the boy's throat, she had also pulled the thread that completely, irreversibly unraveled this girl who sat miles away from them in District One (where the boy would have more than preferred her to be.) To this girl, to this individual, the boy's death had shattered her to an unconceivable amount of tiny little pieces, some she would never be able to completely pick back up.

But one day, she would stand in a crowd before the very person that killed him and understand why she did. One day, she would become but a single pebble in a wave of rebellion- dutifully moving along with it, but not quite a part. One day, after the list of her loved ones lost had increased in number, she would realize that unless she wanted to dissipate into nothing beneath the unbelievable crush of her sorrows, she would have to let go and see that life goes on.

And life does go on. It really does.

But still, there were mornings when she would burrow her face in her knees and say his name, just once. Because even after years had passed there were times when she silently hoped he was still there with her, she just couldn't see.


	2. 1

HE was born during one of the hottest summers District One had seen in years. His mother, shallow and vain by all who knew her, cradled her newest trinket and declared they would stop and stare at her baby boy in the streets because he would be as spectacular as the sun. And then she gave him a name that even at a young age would be enough reinforce his worth; _Marvel._

Let there be no confusion that the boy was wholly pretentious; his life had been spent with little to no humility or humbleness and up until the moment he died he believed he was untouchable.

As a child, he commanded the caretakers and his mother would stand for a moment in the doorway of the nursery thinking to herself, "What a man my boy shall become," every day, only because she had to pass the nursery room to get to the balcony where she sat with crossed legs to sip on her tea- a ritual she had done long before the birth of her first son. His ostentatiousness was in part her fault, because while she may have not spent much time with him, the time she did was purposed to ensure her boy would know the difference between what was socially acceptable among the delicate, elite ring of people his father had worked so hard to maintain, and what was not.

"Look, darling," she would say as they walked through the market, extending one ringed finger in the direction of a group of factory children. "You don't play with them. They are icky, like bugs. Do you understand?"

The icky little children she pointed to could be considered the most unfortunate of the country. Perhaps the children of District Eleven and District Twelve were the most _pitied_ because even the lowest of the low rarely starved in District One. But rather, these children were unfortunate because they had been born into the fiercely hard working class of the district whose specialty was supposed to be luxury. But surely you didn't believe that it was the soft, pampered hands of the well-off that created the Capitol's finest goods?

Marvel had a sister who surpassed him in age by two years. She was pretty like her mother, only with her father's nose and she was trained well to sit with crossed legs and eat with delicate fingers that didn't pick at too much food. But she wasn't destined to be great like he was and everyone he knew assured him of that.

His father's name was Etonnante- the name itself was a part of a language that had died long ago. When he began to create a premise for himself in his earlier days, people thought him strange for having such an unusual name. But once he had become wildly successful thanks to a bargain drawn up with a man they called crazy from District Three, who claimed to have invented a machine that turned graphite into diamonds, for a time it had become popular for children in District One to have names like Antoinette or Promenade in his honor.

Etonnante had created great plans for his son before he was even born. Thankfully for Marvel, the entirely of his life had been enough to fill them, right up until the moment he died in the Hunger Games he was supposed to win.

_That_ had always been a part of his life. As a very young child he had watched each one. But they never quite meant something to him until the day he saw his first male tribute for District One come out as victor. The man's name was Gloss. Even if he wouldn't one day become his mentor, Marvel would have never forgotten him.

At the time Marvel was just a sniffling seven year old- his thick locks of blonde hair coated in heavy amounts of grease to keep them tamed. He had just started his training at the only Academy in District One- like all the other high-ranking aristocratic children. There wasn't a time when he didn't know of the Hunger Games and even at an age so young he understood their nature, to an extent. What he didn't understand was what exactly the tributes were fighting for- the tributes that _mattered_, anyway.

But when he saw Gloss emerge onto the stage of the Capitol at the end of the Sixty-Fourth Hunger Games, he finally understood. In that moment, Marvel learned of _glory_. It was something his father had tried to explain to him many a time, but it was also something he had to see for himself. His wide blue eyes soaked up the seventeen year old Gloss, standing tall and strong before the masses.

And he heard the roar of the crowd.

For the rest of his life, Marvel could never quite rid his ears of that sound. It would taunt him in his dreams, it would motivate him in the day hours. It almost possessed him in a way. The fame, the beautiful cheers, but most of all the _glory_.

The word in itself was enough to make his back straighten and his shoulders roll back with posture. Glory would be everything. He dedicated his life to its pursuit. And while he wasn't necessarily blood thirsty (rather he was quite the opposite; he found such gore to be rather repulsing- not to mention the thought of even touching the underfed, permanently filthy bodies of the lesser districts was enough to make his long nose crinkle in disgust) it would all be worth it when he came out victorious, finally hearing the cheers of the crowds as they screamed his name in admiration and his father nodding his head in approval, agreeing when he said; _yes this is everything we've been waiting for. This is everything._

No one could have convinced him it wouldn't all be his one day. He excelled in the Academy. His peers learned quickly that they were ether to hate him or love him, but none could have rivaled him. By the time he reached his teenage years, he had become exactly what he knew he would be; the polished pupil of his teachers, the idol among his classmates, the best of his age in the Academy, the handsome, perfected Marvel- son of the famed Etonnante and _pride_ of District One.

He strutted about the halls with his chin tilted in the air, openly welcoming the stares of those he passed whether they be glowers of detest or gazes of awe. He embraced the attention he got because he was so sure that one day soon it would come from more than just the Academy; it would come from the flea-bitten provincials of Twelve, it would come from the perfectly molded citizens of the Capitol, it would come from the sullen inhabitants of Two, it would come from the over-crowded streets of Three, Five and Eight. It would come from every eye in the country.

They didn't need to tell him he was the very best. He already knew.

What he didn't know was that he had been trained in more ways than one. The victory he worked so hard to achieve and most of all- the glory he worked so hard to feel was all the exact illusion he was nurtured to believe. He was a product of the Capitol- a child sentenced to kill without understanding what it meant to die, a small piece in their elaborate games.

But _they _would have never told him this. Not the teachers who had numbed him to praise. Not his father that would be satisfied with a crown but not the embarrassment of his son's death. Not his peers. Not the alliances he had made throughout the years who he considered both lapdogs and friends. None of them.


End file.
